


Lift-to-Drag Ratio

by katjh



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Major Character Injury, Scientific Inaccuracy, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katjh/pseuds/katjh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on <a href="http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/12672.html?thread=28307072#t28307072">this prompt</a> at avengerkink:<br/>The entire team are en route to a mission, or something of the sort. Clint is piloting.</p><p>A storm, technical malfunctions, a surprise attack, etc causes the jet to go down. The team is convinced (Not easily) to abandon ship. However, they're in a populated area and Clint needs to stay on board to crash-land and make sure no one on the ground will be hurt.</p><p>I'd love to see a trapped and majorly injured Clint waiting for the team to return to the crash site and his hazy brain worries that they've abandoned him.</p><p>H/C and team fluff in the aftermath, please! (If you decide to write an aftermath.)</p><p>Make my dreams come true?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Glide Performance

The problem with emergency getaways was that there was never any time to do a preflight. And preflights were _important_ , especially after the aircraft in question had been parked in enemy territory for a while, unguarded except for a camo cover. Anyone could have come by and done something to it. Anything could happen.

It was a thought that was always vaguely in the back of Clint's mind, but now it was at the forefront because they were going to _crash_.

"Folks, this is your pilot speaking from the flight deck," he said as he mentally ran through the checklist he'd memorized years ago. "If you look out the window you'll notice that the left engine is no longer operational."

"Do you know why?" Tony asked, unbuckling and coming up behind Clint. Normally, Tony would have been flying in the suit and not the plane, but the Iron Man suit had been crushed and shredded enough that it was no longer aerodynamically stable. Tony had had to run alongside the others during the extraction, and then Thor and Cap wrestled the most damaged pieces off of him so the jagged metal wouldn't crush or cut him.

Clint glanced down at the fuel cutoff valve— _on, that's good, but the engine isn't working, try a restart—_ and then back at the altitude indicator. "If I had to guess, I'd say something's wrong, Stark." He cut electrical power and restarted the engine. The right one came back on, but the left failed again. And the right one was _still_ only at half output, probably damaged from some of the weapons fire they'd been running from, and they couldn't climb with that. "Better grab the chutes, guys," he said. He kept one eye on the altitude indicator. Ten thousand feet and falling, airspeed steady to maximize glide range...

"Is there an airfield nearby?" Cap asked, standing next to Tony.

Bruce called from the back of the jet, "I'm pretty sure they wouldn't want us landing there, given... Well, what we just accomplished."

Natasha had already pulled out the charts. "Clint, can you make it fifty miles?" she asked, finger on a small airfield.

"In this? Tasha, the Quinjet's like a goddamn brick, aerodynamically. I'll be lucky if we make it to the suburbs. Get out, all of you."

"Maybe it needs a jump-start," Cap said, glancing at Thor, who was rather worriedly looking at the walls of the jet like he was about to be thrown against them helplessly.

"No!" Clint yelled, at the same time as Tony said, "That would be a supremely bad idea."

The descent rate was increasing; Clint pulled back on the yoke to ease the nose up and keep the jet at the optimum airspeed. "You have to bail," Clint said. "It's no use all of us getting hurt when this thing goes down, and I'm the only one who has over ten thousand hours in the damn plane. You memorized the checklist yet?"

"Clint, we're not going to let you go down alone," said Cap, resting his hand on Clint's shoulder. He could feel the muscles tighten as Clint fought the plane's tendency to dip the nose. "I've been there. We're not leaving you. If we have to bail, you're coming with us."

"And letting the Quinjet fall like a stone into a city of over two million people?" Clint asked. He adjusted the trim to ease the back-pressure on the yoke, but it was still a struggle. "Just _go_ , okay? I'll be fine."

Steve opened his mouth to object, but Natasha interrupted. "If he says he'll be fine, he will be, Captain." She pressed the microphone button to relay the mayday signal to Coulson and SHIELD.

"You don't have to do this, Clint," Tony said.

Clint banked right. He was pretty sure there was a stretch of open highway he might be able to land on. "I kind of do, Stark."

"Perhaps I may be able to fly you out of here," Thor offered.

Clint shook his head. "I need to take this thing to the ground to minimize civilian casualties. Just _go_ , all right, we're at seven thousand feet and you need to _get out_ and open the parachutes."

"Clint," Cap began, but Bruce and Tony, who realized the physics, dragged him to the back of the jet and began putting on the parachutes.

"I'll try to find an open spot," Clint said. "Good luck, guys. It's been great working with you."

"Don't talk like that," said Steve.

Natasha opened the door. The wind whipped at her. "Stay safe, Clint," she said, and jumped. The rest of them followed, though Steve hesitated again.

"Clint," he started.

"Go on, Cap. Think I haven't crashed a plane before? I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar. Shut the door behind you, if you can."

Steve's expression was pained, but Clint was looking left and right for a clear space to land when Steve jumped from the plane and opened his parachute. For once, Clint's sharp eyes didn't see his target.

"Mayday, Eagle Four Four Foxtrot," he said into the mike. "I don't see anywhere to land."

Coulson's voice came through clear over the headset. "Roger that, Four Four Foxtrot. Altitude?"

"Going through fifty-five hundred, Four Four Foxtrot. Make sure the next time Tony builds one of these, he optimizes the glide performance, sir."

"Squawk 4434 and ident, Four Four Foxtrot," Coulson said, the voice of calm.

Clint pressed the button. "Squawking 4434 and ident, sir. Widow activated the beacon before they all bailed."

"We're not reading it," Coulson said after several seconds.

"Descending two thousand." Clint kept his eyes open for a space to land. The Quinjet fell like a brick, it really did, and if he survived this he'd make sure the next model was halfway decent.

"Ident again, 4434, Hawkeye."

Clint looked at the code. 4434. He hit ident. "Squawk 4434, Four Four Foxtrot. Nowhere clear, sir. She's going down..." A burst of static made him grimace. "Sir? Coulson?"

A feedback shriek and static greeted him.

"This is Eagle Four Four Foxtrot, crashing. I see a warehouse. I don't know if you can still hear me, Coulson. That's where I'll be."

 

Flaps down. The nose billowed up a bit with the increased lift, but it was barely enough to drift low over some buildings, and a gargoyle—really, a fucking _gargoyle—_ scraped the bottom of the Quinjet and sent it into a downward spin. Clint turned the yoke and applied rudder, but he could only stop the spin, not recover the altitude, and—

It was very loud, and then it wasn't at all.

***

 

"Everyone all right?" Steve asked as he untangled the strings of his parachute. They'd landed in what appeared to be a downtown area, or at least, he had. Tony had ended up on a roof and complained loudly until Thor flew him down. Steve wasn't at all surprised to find Natasha walking towards him, and Bruce limping behind with the cut strings of his own parachute trailing on the ground. It looked like part of it was wrapped around his leg, but he didn't seem to be seriously injured.

"We're fine," Tony said, extracting himself from Thor's hold. "Dignity a little bruised, what with the bridal-style carry. Thor, save that for Dr. Foster, okay?"

Thor blinked at Tony. "Lady Jane does not get stuck on rooftops," he said.

"Dr. Banner, Widow?" Steve asked.

"Windblown, nothing worse," said Natasha. "Bruce twisted his ankle on the landing, but the alternative was hitting the side of a building."

"Not recommended," Bruce said with a small smile. "I, uh, don't suppose the first aid kit made it down here with us?"

Steve looked around. "No?" he said, rolling up the parachute.

"I've worked with less," said Bruce, and he took the parachute from Steve and the knife offered by Natasha to make a simple wrap for his ankle.

"Do we know where Clint went down?" Tony asked while Bruce tied a strip of parachute silk around his ankle.

"Why didn't you look for the Quinjet or smoke while you were stuck on the roof?" Steve retorted, turning and looking up at the sky for any sign of the jet.

"I didn't think of it until now!" Tony protested, while Thor was already on his way back up to the roof to look.

 

***

 

Clint fought his way painfully back to consciousness and immediately regretted it. It was dark and too hot, his left leg hurt like a bitch, and he couldn't move.

Seatbelt. Right. He reached for the buckle and found he couldn't move his right arm more than a couple inches. A heavy metal bar had fallen across his chest, and maybe that was why his leg hurt. On top of that, breathing hurt too.

Oh.

 

His eyes adjusted to the dark slowly. He could see the bar now; it had crushed most of the top of the jet and had trapped him in the pilot's seat. He thought maybe he could reach the bar under the seat and ease it back, but his fingers barely brushed it, uselessly.

He had a pounding headache, and when he raised his left hand to rub at his forehead, his fingers came away bloody. There was a matching bloody mark on the big support, too.

He wasn't entirely sure which way was up. He remembered going into a spin and now everything hurt. How long had it been? His throat was dry. His toes were sloshing blood in his boots. That was kind of worrying.

The lights were out. Did that mean the electrical equipment was dead now? Hadn't Coulson said something about not being able to find him?

Clint inhaled as deeply as the bar across his chest allowed him to. They weren't coming for him, were they?

The only people who would be coming for him were the ones they'd just pissed off. Why would they come for Clint? He'd wrecked two Quinjets in just over a year. He was a liability.

He wondered how many people were in the warehouse when he crashed. They were probably all dead or injured too. It would explain why none of them had bothered to free him.

 

So the rest of the team would get a decent extraction with a working plane, and they'd go onto the helicarrier—oh, that was another aircraft he'd wrecked, so the net damage to aircraft that Clint had done would be somewhere upwards of ten billion dollars, and that ignored all the damage to buildings from the crashes, and every time one of his explosive arrows managed to blow an alien or Doombot or something through a window.

It wouldn't matter if they couldn't find him, though.

And if they didn't find him soon, and who knew if they were even _looking_ , he'd be dead.

 

All because he didn't get a chance to do a fucking preflight, and the left engine gave out ( _I'd like to die with the knowledge of why the left engine went out when we were at twelve thousand feet,_ he thought to himself, _since clearly it wasn't fuel, and sure, it was losing power during the entire climb, but we didn't hit any birds or anything—oh, Christ, that hurts!_ ) and he'd had to stay in while it crashed over a city with no stretches of open roads.

He wasn't even sure if he was still in that warehouse. Given that a bunch of the jet seemed to still be intact, Clint thought he must not have gone straight down, but probably skidded a couple hundred feet through brick and steel.

Vaguely he remembered that if you got caught in an avalanche, you could drop something to find which way was up, since gravity always worked down. There was nothing to drop, but he could feel the blood dripping down the side of his head. That would probably keep him entertained until he finished bleeding out and died. After all, what did they need an archer for? Probably just to be the redshirt who crashed their expensive planes all the time. He kind of hoped they wouldn't come for him when he was dead. Tasha would most likely insist on a funeral or memorial service or something, and that would cost them more money.

 

No, they'd come. Clint knew they would come, though mostly it would be to recover the wreck and all the classified equipment on it. SHIELD wouldn't want anyone else getting their hands on the Quinjet, after all, even if it had been wrecked to oblivion.

They should have been here by now, though. He couldn't tell how bad his injuries were or how long he'd been unconscious, but there was a dried patch of blood on the beam, and everything was dark. Given that it was entirely possible he was buried under half a building though (and not for the first time), the darkness wasn't really indicative of how long he'd been there.

It was far, far too warm. Had the jet caught fire yet? Funny. It didn't smell like jet fuel. Clint was sure the instruments had shown they had almost three-quarters of a tank when they left. What was the Quinjet's specific fuel consumption rate again? If the landing was this violent, shouldn't the jet have caught fire? No, wait, he'd shut off the engines... Was the jet on fire? It didn't smell like smoke, but he was light-headed.

That might have been the blood loss. He couldn't tell. He just wanted to finish dying. It wouldn't be long now.

 

***

 

"What do you mean, the beacon's not responding?" Steve growled into the comm. "This is Hawkeye and the Quinjet we're talking about! We don't leave our man behind."

Coulson's sigh came through clearly over the connection. "While the jet was going down, we lost radio communications and radar contact. Hawkeye squawked on the appropriate frequency, but we still didn't read it. We can't find the beacon's signal either. The radio antenna is well-protected, Captain, but somehow we lost contact. You're going to have to look for the jet from your position."

"Yeah, about that," Tony said. "I actually left a good amount of the Iron Man suit on board. And _that_ has a locater in it, because it's really very important that I know where my stuff is. You'd do well to learn from that, by the way. Anyway, if somebody could just provide me with a phone that hasn't been stepped on, crushed, or broken..."

Natasha pulled her phone from her belt and unlocked it. "Don't change my settings," she said, voice cold.

"I wouldn't dare," Tony said. He frowned. "You know this model's three years out of date, right? I mean, you've clearly been updating the software, bu—not the point, right. Let me just... Aha! JARVIS, can you give me the approximate location of the suit I was wearing when I left two days ago?"

"Which part?" JARVIS asked, his voice dry.

Bruce paled. Natasha's eyes hardened and her jaw set.

Tony swallowed. "Um... A general location, then."

"The nearest part is approximately two miles south of your current location. The rest of the parts that I can locate are scattered over the next fifteen hundred feet," JARVIS supplied.

Steve looked up at the sun. "South is that way," he said, pointing. "Dr. Banner, I think you should bring along as much of that parachute as possible, in case Clint is badly injured."

 

***

 

He was going to die alone and in pain.

Clint had accepted that a long time ago, before the Avengers, before SHIELD, hell, before the circus and the orphanages. He knew he would die in pain.

He didn't think he'd die in the dark, trapped like this, bleeding out. It almost made him laugh, but that would be having hysterics, and he didn't want to die hysterical.

He could see light. Was it time to go? "Don't go towards the light," he slurred. That made him laugh. Shit. He was having hysterics, wasn't he? At least the team wouldn't see him dying without dignity.

"Barton!"

Auditory hallucinations, too. What was it like, he wondered, to finally die? He'd asked Coulson that once and got a _look_ before Coulson told him to leave the philosophical questions to somebody else.

"Am I dead now?"

"No, you idiot."

Oh. The hallucinations were helpful, at least. That one sounded like Natasha.

Everything was bright now. And then—

It seemed like heaven was identical to SHIELD medical.

Which meant he must be in hell.

Or in SHIELD medical.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm actually an aeronautical engineering student and a student pilot, so I tried to put a few accurate details in here. Unfortunately, the Quinjet a) is aerodynamically impossible and not real and b) has no flight data for me to analyze instead of doing my final project analyzing the flight performance of the Curtiss Wright Helldiver. So the things about altitude, squawking (4434 is actually weather reconnaissance, but I think SHIELD would do something like that), glide performance, those are semi-accurate. I would love to be more accurate because I'm a geek and studying aero and I love planes, but I really can't be without specs for the aircraft, and even then, it would take hours in MATLAB and I'm dedicated, but not that dedicated.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fluffy aftermath, Clint on morphine or something, Tony being insensitive, Natasha being protective, team dynamics, fun stuff like that.

"So, obviously we need to keep maneuverability as the number one priority, but I was thinking we could sacrifice a little bit just to make sure you have a decent glide range," Tony said, scribbling on his tablet.

"Uh-huh." Clint was still on the good drugs, which meant that the room looked all wobbly and colorful, and half the things Tony was saying didn't make sense, not that Tony usually made sense to Clint, but Clint had enough hours in flight to understand all the key terms there.

"You know what would be awesome? Being able to make the next one out of Vibranium. I mean, there's no way we'd be able to get enough, but just imagine it, Clint."

"Tony," Natasha said warningly. "Let him rest."

"No, no, s'okay," Clint told her, attempting to wave his hand in her general direction. Both of her. "C'n I see two of you 'cause I have two eyes?" he asked dopily.

"Yes," Tony said seriously. "If you ever want to see only one of her again, we'll have to get you an eyepatch like Fury's."

"Stop that," Bruce said, poking Tony in the side. "It's just the painkillers and the concussion, Clint."

"Indeed, you suffered many injuries when you chose to save the lives of civilians," Thor said. He kept his voice down in SHIELD medical out of consideration for Clint and the other patients.

"Are you feeling any better?" Steve asked, coming around to sit next to Clint.

Clint turned his head slowly--he'd had a wicked case of whiplash, it turned out, and so his neck ached--and he tried to focus his eyes on Steve. "I feel like..." He paused and stuck out his tongue for a second. "Like really... Cotton candy, and trampolines."

Steve looked a little dumbfounded, and Tony asked, "Oh my god, why aren't we filming this?" Natasha punched him in the shoulder, and he said, "Ow, what was that for?"

Steve ignored their bickering, and he said, "Look, Clint... I know now's not the best time to ask you, but I've been thinking... It was really brave of you to go down with the jet and make sure no one on the ground got hurt, but it's not your responsibility to do that. If anything, it's mine. I never learned to fly a plane back in the war, but I think I should. We might need that, one day."

"Jus' don't crash it," Clint told him. "Last time you crashed... Took seventy years to find you."

Tony laughed at that, which made Natasha punch him again. Steve had a moment where he was trying to keep a straight face and failing. Fortunately, no one noticed. "I'm sure you'll make a great teacher," he said to Clint.

"Soon as I get out," said Clint. He pointed slightly to the left of Bruce. "When?"

Bruce picked up Clint's chart. "I have no doubt you'll get out of here in a couple weeks," he said. "But a full recovery is more than a month out."

Steve put his hand on Clint's shoulder. "Don't worry about it. It can wait until you're healthy again."

"Sim," Clint said, closing his eyes, and fortunately for Steve, Natasha could translate that as, "Flight simulators, Steve. They're a little bit like video games."

"I'm building one. Now," Tony promised. "With a moving cockpit and everything."

"I would like to play it as well," Thor said. "Is it much like Mario Kart?"

"Not teachin' you," Clint mumbled. Thor was notoriously bad at Mario Kart, but he enjoyed it nonetheless.

Coulson appeared in the doorway. "I think now would be a good time to leave," he said quietly. "Clint needs his rest, and the nurse is starting to get annoyed that you're violating the three-visitor rule."

"Y'all gonna be here when I wake up?" Clint asked suddenly.

Coulson glanced apologetically in the direction of the nurse station, then walked into the room. "Of course," he said, and the rest of the team voiced their agreement.

 

The nurse would attempt to kick them out a few hours later, but was no match for a team of protective Avengers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fixed an accuracy issue in the first chapter. This one's a bit rushed, especially since it's finals week and I'm not supposed to be writing, but I had to get it out and posted before I forgot the ideas and wrote something crappy instead. I might fix it up again later, but I doubt it.  
> Also, those cockpit flight simulator things? Awesome, lemme tell you. And Microsoft Flight Simulator isn't too shabby either, but naturally Tony Stark would invent his own program, right?


End file.
